Wow, so we managed to stuff a demonstrably incompetent citizen in jail, but seem unable to find anyone who actually did us harm?
I note as an interesting aside that the US seems perfectly willing to fling lots of depleted uranium around, and takes a very strong position that it's perfectly healthy.
Yes, well, what kind of uranium are we talking about? Soldiers use "depleted" uranium. Uranium has to be refined and purified to make it dangerous. High-quality uranium, you of course know, produces all of the heat and danger of explosion in a nuclear power plant. Even higher quality makes atom bombs. It can be dangerous.
"Uranium has to be refined and purified to make it dangerous. High-quality uranium, you of course know, produces all of the heat and danger of explosion in a nuclear power plant."
This is, beg pardon, rather subliterate. Turning U238 into the U235 isotope involves neither refining, nor "purifying," nor is it "higher quality."
U235 is a tad difficult to get hold of, and it's rather unlikely that Jose Padilla could have done so; under most circumstances in which he could have, we would have been, in all likelihood, in considerably greater danger than from a "dirty" bomb.
yeah, so i write quick late night comments that lack clarity. i suppose i Could have just linked here.
as for "higher quality," that's assuradly a subjective term, and could be applied depending on one's needs. anyway, uranium does need refined because you don't find hunks of it sitting around. it has to be refined to be made into a sizable portion of pure uranium. According to the wikipedia, U235 and U238 forms are both naturally occuring. U238 can be artificially encouraged to become plutonium, and U235 is itself fissible.
as for it being difficult to get ahold of, i think that's debatable. i certainly don't have enough reliable information on this. there are plenty of rumors of unguarded supplies in the US, and black markets in Russia and Africa.
anyway, central point still holds: some uranium is dangerous.
My psychic powers are telling me that this is going to spark yet another round of people accusing vast groups of hypocrisy, as "the left" argued that depleted uranium is dangerous yet downplays the danger of Padilla, whereas "the right" pooh-poohs the DU danger but sees Padilla as a scary bogeyman, etcetera etcetera yadda arf arf und so weiter...
Uranium is about as harmful as lead to adults. Which is to say, it's nasty stuff, but reasonably safe in bulk form. After all, many "crystal" glasses are lead oxide. I wouldn't drink from them, but . . .
It's true that uranium, as an alpha emitter, won't penetrate skin. The same is true for plutonium, one of the evillest elements on the periodic table. Alpha emitters are harmless externally, but extremely destructive if they get into you. Uranium is a relatively harmless alpha emitter because its half-life is so long.